ARLINGTON, Va. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — September 18, 2013 —
JEDEC
Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development
of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced the
publication of Universal Flash Storage (UFS) version 2.0. Developed for
mobile applications and computing systems requiring high performance and
low power consumption, the new UFS v2.0 standard offers increased link
bandwidth for performance improvement, a security features extension as
well as additional power saving features over the prior version.
JESD220B Universal Flash Storage v2.0 may be downloaded free of charge
from the JEDEC website:
http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/jesd220b.

UFS is a high performance interface designed for use in computing and
mobile systems requiring low power consumption such as smart phones and
tablets. Its high speed serial interface and optimized protocol enable
significant improvements in throughput and system performance. Dramatic
growth in the mobile market coupled with an increasing focus on
multimedia applications continues to drive both usage models and memory
bandwidth requirements, and UFS v2.0 builds on JEDEC Flash memory
storage standards designed to help address this demand. In UFS v2.0, the
link bandwidth has been increased from 300 MB/s in UFS v1.1 to up to 600
MB/s per lane, and multilane support has been introduced allowing up to
1.2 GB/s per each data transfer direction.

To achieve the highest performance and most power efficient data
transport, JEDEC UFS aligns with industry–leading specifications from
the MIPI® Alliance to form its Interconnect Layer. This
collaboration continues with UFS v2.0, which references the M-PHY®
Version 3.0 specification and the UniProSM Version 1.6
specification.

JEDEC has also published two complementary standards, JESD223B UFS Host
Controller Interface (UFSHCI) version 2.0, and JESD223-1 UFS Host
Controller Interface (UFSHCI), Unified Memory Extension. JESD223B is
intended to simplify the design process by defining a standard host
controller interface on which system designers can create a common host
controller software driver layer to work with UFS host controller
hardware from different manufacturers. The HCI functionality also
enables higher performance and power efficiency by minimizing the
involvement of the host processor in the operation of the Flash storage
subsystem. The JESD223-1 UFSHCI Unified Memory Extension standard
defines the interface between the UFS driver and the UFS host
controller. In addition to the register interface, it defines data
structures inside the system memory, which are used to exchange data,
control and status information. Unified Memory offers the possibility to
move device internal working memory into the system memory to reduce
overall system cost and to improve device performance. JESD223B and
JESD223-1 may also be downloaded free of charge from the
JEDEC
website.

“UFS v2.0 offers a clear value proposition to the industry, with
significant performance improvements that will lead to a better overall
mobile device user experience,” said Mian Quddus, Chairman of the JEDEC
Board of Directors and the JC-64 Committee for Embedded Memory Storage
and Removable Memory Cards. He added, “Memory manufacturers and leading
consumer device and mobile OEMs strongly support UFS and have devoted
countless hours to the development of this latest update.”

“UFS 2.0 will drive next generation mobile devices to new performance
levels not available before," said UFSA President Lisa Rhoden. "The new
JEDEC standard demonstrates the power of industry leaders working
together to benefit consumers around the world."

Industry Support

"The substantial performance improvement provided by UFS 2.0 will
accelerate the already strong momentum of UFS in the mobile market,"
said Andrew Haines, Vice President of Marketing for Arasan Chip
Systems. "We are pleased to have contributed to JEDEC's effort to
rapidly evolve the standard in order to meet the needs of consumers and
our UFS IP customers."

“UFS technology continues to evolve with generation 2.0. With a higher
bandwidth and features consolidation, the spec responds to emerging
mobile challenges,” said Micron Senior Director for Wireless
Solutions Group - Mobile Technology, Marco Dallabora. “Standardization
activities have been focused to create a differentiating solution in the
mobile storage arena.”

“The mobile industry has been waiting for much higher performing, high
efficiency storage devices and Samsung sees the new UFS 2.0 JEDEC
standard as empowering the production of flash devices that easily meet
this need,” said JaeHyeong Lee, vice president, memory product planning
& application engineering, Samsung Electronics. “The UFS 2.0
standard will spur development of the finest Samsung mobile storage
devices, whose performance equates to that of high-performance solid
state drives, and which will enable the next generation of high
performance computing devices with a significantly better experience for
mobile consumers.”

“Toshiba is expecting great potential on next generation mobile
storage, UFS, and will continue our contribution to the market expansion
and standardization by JEDEC through developing UFS memory device and
supporting UFS host IP,” said Shigeo Ohshima, Technology Executive of
Toshiba Corporation Semiconductor Company. “With the advent of UFS 2.0,
standardized Unified Memory Extension (UME) will enable further increase
of performance, which Toshiba expects to trigger the expansion of UFS
market from smartphone / tablet to more performance demanding markets,
such as personal computers.”